The Way In Which Apps Like WhatsApp, WeChat May Make Money Whilst Offering up Free Texting And Calling6571468
Have you ever wondered the way a messaging app can make money whilst offering free texting and calling? WhatsApp users in India may be surprised to discover that there's a lot more to messaging apps than communicating. Here's how: by providing services for example digital payments, online shopping and also content.
China's WeChat is just about the perfect example of the great potential that messaging apps hold. With more than 900 million monthly active users, WeChat enables them to do everything from messaging, buying grocery, hailing cabs, purchasing online food and even offline payments at restaurants - all this without having to go to another app. These types of services not merely offer the company outstanding customer stickiness, they also create a remarkable revenue model.
For now, WeChat's competition outside China such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Viber and Line are behind the curve on this front, although some have begun on the way to becoming bigger platforms. "The actual reason chat apps are widening beyond communications is to create a lasting monetisation strategy," said Neha Dharia, a senior analyst with a focus on messaging at London-based research firm Ovum. "Chat apps are shifting away from being merely a provider of communication tools chat, voice and also video) to being a platform for the exchange of services, payment mechanisms as well as content consumption."
WhatsApp, the largest messaging app on earth with 1.3 billion monthly active users, introduced a business version in India early on this week. "Based on research, we all know that people WhatsApp to talk to businesses. make business messaging more convenient for folks and much more efficient for businesses," a WhatsApp spokesperson said in response to ET's questions. Whatsapp Business is a different app from Whatsapp Messenger, aimed mostly at giving a direct communication platform to small enterprises, many of who might be using WhatsApp already.
Whilst Whatsapp has maintained the service free, it might extend it to much larger businesses with added features like analytics, by which it may well demand a usage fee at a later stage, thus creating a revenue model, segment watchers said. This actually also is aimed at improving subscriber connect that it can leverage for future monetization of its other services. The greater agenda - and a more crucial one - for these corporations is to get active users to invest more time on the app or services and make it viable for profit generation, based on analysts.
"Each and every technology company is competing for consumer stickiness, interaction and time invested on the app, and in order to keep them in the app's ecosystem they're broadening themselves to turn into platforms. Simply being messaging apps offering cost-free services will not be a good revenuegeneration model," said Jayanth Kolla, founder of Bengaluru-based research firm Convergence Catalyst.
